I.
Part of Sir Charles's routine was his morning bout of fencing. [Footnote: Sir Charles's fencing seems to have dated from 1874, during his stay in Paris after his first wife's death. Fuller reference to fencing at 76, Sloane Street and to his antagonists will be found in Chapter XLVII. (Vol. II., pp. 233, 234). ] This was the relaxation which he managed to fit into his crowded daily life, but his weekly holiday he spent upon the river. He notes, just before the Parliamentary crisis due to the bombardment of Alexandria:
'At this time I had given up the practice of going out of town to stay
with friends for Sundays, and I did not resume it, for I found it
better for me to get my work done on the Saturday night and my Foreign
Office boxes early on the Sunday morning, to go to the Abbey on the
Sunday morning at ten, and after this service to go on the river, and
go to bed at eight o'clock at least this one night in the week, and I
bought a piece of land at Dumsey Deep, near Chertsey, with the view of
building a cottage there.'
It was not here, however, that he built his riverside house, but close by, at Dockett Eddy, which he bought in the following summer. [Footnote: A fuller account of life in his riverside home is to be found in Chapter LI. (Vol. II., pp. 317-324).] The two pieces of ground were connected by a long strip of frontage which he acquired, thereby saving the willows and alders which then sheltered that reach, and made it a windless course for sculling. Even more perfect was it, by reason of its gravelly bottom, for another form of watermanship. On Sunday, October 22nd, 1882,
'after Westminster Abbey I went down to Teddington, and took a lesson in punting from Kemp, the Teddington fisherman, and from this time forward became devoted to the art, for which I gave up my canoeing.'
His resolve to spend his Sundays in retreat on the river did not pass without protest from his friends, as is shown by a characteristic letter from Sir William Harcourt:
"CUFFNELLS, LYNDHURST, "August 28, 1882."
"DEAR DILKE,"
"Don't be an odious solitary snipe in the ooze of the Thames, but come down here at once and nurse Bobby.
"Yours ever, W. V. H."
"Bobby" was Mr. Robert Harcourt, now M.P. for the Montrose Burghs.
He replied:
"LALEHAM FERRY (for this night only. I shall be at the P.O. every day this week). "August 29th.
"MY DEAR HARCOURT,
"I went to bed on Saty. night at dark and on Sunday night at dark. Last night I was late from London, and sat up till nearly 9! Bobby himself can hardly beat that, can he? On the other hand, he does not get a swim in the Thames at 5 a.m., or breakfast at 6, as I do.
"It is very good of you—and like old times—for you to press me to come down, and, believe me, I should like my company. But when, as now, I am splendidly well, and only want to make up arrears of sleep, the river is the best place for me. I shall go to Walmer next week, but then that is sea, and sea is sleepy too; and I have all my work there with the telegraph in the House, and messengers four times a day as if I was in the F.O., so I can be away—and yet be on duty—as I promised to be till 19th or 20th Septr….
"… This is the longest letter that I was ever known to write in all my life, except perhaps once or twice to you in the old days."
It had now been decided that Wentworth Dilke, being eight years old, should go to school and leave Mr. Chamberlain's house, of which he had been an inmate for some eighteen months.
'On the day of Tel-el-Kebir I received a very pleasing letter from Chamberlain, thanking me for what I had said to him about his reception for so long a period at Highbury of my son. It was a touching letter, which showed both delicacy and warmth of affection.'
On September 21st Sir Charles Dilke went to Birmingham to take his boy to Mrs. Maclaren's school at Summerfields, near Oxford. 'Then crossing to Waterford, spent five days in the South of Ireland—and afterwards went straight to St. Tropez to stay with M. Émile Ollivier.' "Il faut fermer la boutique et alors on se trouve tout de suite bien," is his comment as he started on one such journey.
'During my visit to Ollivier I explored the south coast of the mountains of the Moors, along which there was no road, and bought some land at Cavalaire, against the possible chance of a boulevard being made through my land at Toulon in such a way as to cut me off from the sea. I walked from Bormes to the Lavandou upon the coast, and fancied I found the path by which St. Francis journeyed when he landed to save Provence from the plague. It is hollowed out by feet, in some places to three feet deep through the hard quartz and schist, and everywhere at least six inches, so its age is evidently great, and it must have been a path in the days of Saracen domination, if not even in or before the Roman times, for the two villages were ever small.
'At Ste. Claire, the first bay eastward from the Lavandou, I had seen a funeral in which all the crucifixes were borne before the corpse by women, and the coffin carried by women. Ollivier's father was still living—Démosthène, born under the First Republic, and a deputy under the Second: an old Jacobin of an almost extinct type. Ollivier's house is as pretty as the whole coast. It stands on a peninsula with perfect sands, one or other of which is sheltered for bathing in any wind, and instead of the usual parched sterility of Provence, springs rise all round the house, which is lost in a dense forest of young palms. The views are not from the house, but from the various shores of the peninsula, all these, however, being close at hand. I had for escort in my trips about the coast the famous Félix Martin, founder and Mayor of St. Raphael and of Valescure, a railway engineer who was known as the American of Provence, and who, in fact, is the most desperate and the most interesting and pleasant speculator of France. Speaking to me of Fréjus, my favourite town, and its surroundings, Martin called it "the Roman Campagna on the Bay of Naples," a very pretty phrase, absolutely true of it, for the scenery is that of the plain between Naples and Capua, but the ruins and the solemnity of the foreground were those of the outskirts of Rome till Martin spoilt it. At the spot where I bought my land eighty boats of Spanish and Italian coral fishers were at anchor. I picked up Roman tiles upon my ground, and found a Roman tomb in the centre of my plot.'
'I was struck with some of the old châteaux in the woods as I returned along the coast to Toulon. Near Bormettes there are two which were nationalized at the Revolution, and the families of the buyers, having turned Legitimist and put stained glass into the chapel windows, are now becoming nobles in their turn, at all events in their own estimation, and thriving upon cork and American vines.[Footnote: The piece of land at Cavalaire was never built on by Sir Charles, but he remained owner of it till 1905, when it was sold by him. His friendship with the Ollivier household continued till the end of his life.]
'It was during this visit that Ollivier made use of a phrase which I have repeated: "When one looks at the Republic one says: 'It can't last a week—it is dead.' But when one looks at what is opposed to it, one says: 'It is eternal.'"'
The true inner history and genesis of the Franco-Prussian War formed matter for talk with Ollivier, who was among the half-dozen men in Europe best able to inform Sir Charles on the question. The Memoir records a reminiscence told by M. Ollivier.
'When the war broke out, he naturally asked the Emperor about his alliances. The Emperor, who was singularly sweet and winning in his ways, smiled his best smile but said nothing, walked to a table, unlocked a drawer, and took out two letters-one from the Emperor of Austria, and the other from the King of Italy, both promising their alliance. But, although this was Ollivier's story, the Italian letter must have been conditional. Ollivier set down the defeat to this slowness of action, and supineness, due first to the Emperor's firm belief that Austria would move, and then to his stone in the bladder and refusal to let anyone else command. At a later date I became aware of the true story, which was that afterwards told by me in Cosmopolis. [Footnote: "The Origin of the War of 1870," by Sir Charles Dilke, Cosmopolis, January, 1896.] Austria had declined to join in a war begun in the middle of the summer. It had been fixed for May, 1871. Bismarck found this out from the Magyars, and made the war in 1870.'
To the detail thus gained at first hand Sir Charles Dilke added another in the next year. On February 1st, 1883, he met at Sir William Harcourt's house the Italian Ambassador Count Nigra, who had been in 1870 Minister in Paris:
'He told me that in 1866 the Italians had sent to Paris to ask whether they should join Prussia or Austria, both of whom had promised to give them Venice, and how the Emperor had told them that Italy was to join Prussia as the weaker side, and that when the combatants were exhausted he intended to take the Rhine. Nigra also told me that in 1870 the Emperor had told him that he meant peace, and that it was Gramont on his own account who had told Benedetti to get from the King of Prussia the promise for the future. This was all superficial, as we now know that Nigra was, as the Empress Eugénie said in 1907, a "false friend." Nigra said that Bismarck had made the war by telegraphing his own highly coloured account of the interview; for the French official account, which had only reached Paris (according to Nigra) after war had been declared, had shown that the King had been very civil to Benedetti, although the French Ambassador had persisted in raising the question no less than three several times…. [Footnote: The famous interview at Ems between the King of Prussia and M. Benedetti, the French Ambassador at Berlin, is referred to. See Benedetti, Ma Mission en Prusse, chap. vi.; Bismarck, His Reflections and Reminiscences, translated from the German under the supervision of A. J. Butler, vol. ii., chap, xxii.; Life of Granville, vol. ii., chap. ii.]
'On my return through Paris in September, 1882, I had interviews with Duclerc, the French Prime Minister, and with Nubar, as well as with Gambetta. Duclerc I found a cross old man, who was furious because I mentioned Madagascar. On the Tunis capitulations I found the French willing to come to an agreement; but Egypt, the Suez Canal, the Congo, the Pacific Islands, and Newfoundland were all of them difficult questions at this time….
'In a talk with Gambetta on October 19th he said to me that it was his intention, "whether I liked Duclerc or not," to keep him in power, whether he does what he ought, does nothing, or does what is ridiculous. The curse of France is instability. Duclerc is an honest man.' Gambetta was 'aged and in bad spirits.'
Sir Charles communicated this expression through Mr. Plunkett, the British Chargé d'Affaires, to M. Duclerc. "I gave him the third alternative in more diplomatic language," Mr. Plunkett wrote, "but he understood me, and we laughed over the idea."
A general reflection of this year is that 'Gambetta hates fools in theory, and loves them, I think, in practice.'
In London during the autumn session Sir Charles records some interesting gossip, to which may be added this first entry of earlier date:
'Lord Granville was a most able man, who did not, in my opinion, decline in intellectual vigour during the many years in which he took a great part in public affairs. He always had the habit of substitution of words, and I have known him carry on a long conversation with me at the Foreign Office about the proceedings of two Ambassadors who were engaged on opposite sides in a great negotiation, and call "A" B, and "B" A through the whole of it, which was, to say the least of it, confusing. He also sometimes entirely forgot the principal name in connection with the subject—as, for example, that of Mr. Gladstone when Prime Minister—and had to resort to the most extraordinary forms of language in order to convey his meaning. The only other person in whom I have ever seen this peculiarity carried to such a point was the Khedive Ismail, who sent for me when I was in office and he in London, and when the Dervishes were advancing upon Egypt, to say that he had an important piece of information to give the Government, which was the name of a spot at which the Dervishes might easily be checked, owing to the narrowness of the valley. He kept working up to the name, and each time failing to give it, so that I ultimately went away without having been able to get from him the one thing which would have made the information useful. Each time he closed his speech by saying, "Le nom de ce point important est—chose—machine—chose," and so on…
'On Thursday, November 2nd, I breakfasted with Mr. Gladstone to meet the Duc de Broglie. We discussed the question of the authorship of the pretty definition of Liberal-Conservatives as men who sometimes think right, but always vote wrong. But even Arthur Russell, who was at the breakfast with his wife, could throw no light upon the matter. Madame Olga Novikof was also present, and, of course, the Duc de Broglie took me into a corner to ask me if it was true that Mr. Gladstone was absolutely under her influence. She announced her intention of going the next day to Birmingham, and Mr. Gladstone asked Chamberlain to go with her, although he did not know her and although there was a Cabinet; but Chamberlain refused.
'In the evening of November 15th there dined with me John Morley, Lord
Arthur Russell, and Gibson, afterwards Lord Ashbourne, Huxley, the
Rector of Lincoln, and some others; and, thanks to Gibson, who was
very lively, the conversation was better than such things often are.
He was deep in the secrets of Randolph Churchill…
'I was asked from 24th to 27th to stay with the Duke and Duchess of
Edinburgh at Eastwell Park, but was also asked to Sandringham.
'The Princess of Wales told me a story of the Shah which had amused her. Walking with her at the State Ball, he had clutched her arm, and with much excitement asked about the Highland costume which he had seen for the first time. Having thus got the word "Écossais" into his head, and afterwards seeing Beust with his legs in pink silk stockings, he again clutched her, and exclaimed: "Trop nu—plus nu qu'Écossais."'